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We’re here with the first of a (hopefully) weekly series of updates to the Sir Multiplayer Test. The new version is v0.1.45. If you’ve opted into the Multiplayer Branch on Steam you should get the new update automatically.

The first week of testing went smoother than we could have hoped for with our official servers more or less constantly populated and only one short outage all week. It’s all been remarkably stable and we’re very pleased. It’s also been fantastic to see so many of you hosting your own servers for friends and the general public, and to that end we’ve spent a good deal of this week adding some more controls for server operators. The full release notes are below but the long and short of it is there’s now a proper voting system for electing and replacing admins, kicking grumpy ne’er-do-wells, voting to start maps if someone is idle in the lobby and won’t ready up…

There are of course a number of bugs found and squashed – thanks to your feedback – so keep those reports coming in. We’ve been listening to feature feedback too and have added a new system for locating and identifying other players. You can now ‘ping’ your location onto the compass with a keypress (default “Y”) so friends can find each other or mark areas of interest like good loot. This marker will last for 10 seconds and for the duration the player’s name will also appear above their head if you are within a certain distance. It’s essentially the visual equivalent of shouting “Oi! I’m over here!”

Thanks from the whole team for your enthusiastic uptake of Multiplayer Sir, it’s been fantastic to watch your streams and videos, and even better to play alongside you

More to come!

Patch Notes:

Server Controls.

1. Server operators can now optionally add an Admin Password during set up.

Use #admin password to log in as admin with this password.

2. Admins can make other players the admin with #makeadmin playername

3. You can now vote to use admin commands even if there is no admin.

Use #callvote command to start the vote (e.g #callvote kick playername to kick someone or #callvote new to start a new map. Clients then use #vote yes or #vote no to vote on this request.

Command list:

#new – starts new map

#restart – restarts current map

#kick playername – kicks playername

#admin password – logs in as admin if an admin password is set up on the server (note that admins logged in in this way override voted admins).

It’s important to understand that this is a work in progress version of the multiplayer aspect of Sir and as such there are plenty of bugs and missing features in the current build. As before with the single player, we’ll be updating and improving as we go. OK, you know that, on to the guide:

Step 1.
Firstly, you’ll need to opt-in to a beta branch of the game. To do this you need to locate Sir, You Are Being Hunted in your Steam Library and right click for a drop down menu. Select “Properties” at the bottom of the drop down and in the window that pops up, and then select the BETAS tab. There is a drop down for opting-in to Betas for the game here. Select “multiplayer” from the drop down. You may need to restart Steam to prompt it to begin the download of this new beta branch. Once the game has updated move on to step 2.

Step 2.
The Multiplayer Test build isn’t yet directly launchable from Steam itself. Instead you’ll have to find a “multiplayer” folder inside Sir’s Root directory and launch the executable from there. There are both 64bit and 32bit versions. Here are some ways to find those:

or
Alternatively you can right click on the Sir listing in your Library and select the Local Files tab, then click Browse Local Files and drill down into the x64/x86 folders there.

Once Sir Multiplayer launches you’ll be presented with a menu screen similar to the Singleplayer game but with some exciting new options.

Start Server
Will open a dialogue with some server options. These are limited at the moment but will become more fleshed out in a later update. N.B. We recommend an upload speed of 200Kb/sec if you intend to run a server. Slower connections may be viable for fewer than four players.

Once you’ve given your server a name, a password (optional) and set the number of players and pieces you’d like click Start to launch a Server hosted on your machine. You’ll see a window briefly open then minimise. This is the Server. You can use this window to admin your Server or alternatively you can use in-game commands from the Client.

Connect
Will open a server browser showing all Servers currently registered with the master server. If you are running a Server it should be listed here. You can also access your Player Settings from here and Direct Connect to an IP if you wish rather than browse.

Go ahead and hit Join next to your server of choice, one of two things will happen:

- You will arrive in a Lobby for a game about to start.
- You will see the map generation screen because you are joining a game already in progress.

We’ll be making it clear in the browser whether a game is in progress of not soon but for now it’s potluck (unless you’re connecting to your own ofc!)

If you’re in a Lobby you have another chance to tailor you character (in case you want to make sure all players involved in the game look different). There is also a chat window you can use here before the game starts. Hit Ready when you’re… er… ready… When all players are Ready the game will begin.

Server Admins
The first person to connect to a Server is automatically made the Admin. Admins have certain commands available to them (which you can find below). If you are running the Server yourself the Server window can also be used to issue commands even if you yourself are not the Admin.

Admin Commands
Admins have the following commands available to them from within the game. Simply type these into the chat window (default “T” to open) to issue the command.

#New
Starts a new world

#Restart
Restarts the current world

#Lobby
Returns all players to the Lobby

#Kick Playername
Kicks Playername from the server

OK, we’re all in, now what?
Mutiplayer Test games of Sir take place on a single island with a random biome. Only one person can escape and win the game. You must return a number of Device Fragments to the Stone Circle as per the Singleplayer game but in Multiplayer the Stones are only active for certain periods of time. In other words you can only return Fragments during this active period. The stones flare like this at random intervals. You will get a warning when the Stones are about to become active, they will then remain active for 3 minutes before deactivating again. This cycle will continue until enough pieces have been returned to let one player escape. The player who drops off the last required piece will win. Remember that you can carry more than one piece at a time (if you find small pieces) so when there only a few pieces remaining it might be time to get ruthless…

You can find a running count of the number of Fragments returned and required in your Inventory window.

New Features for Multiplayer
Some things behave differently in Multiplayer compared to the Singleplayer game. Here are a few things to be aware of:

* The Stone Circle now operates on a timer (see above).
* The Scanner can now detect Fragments stashed in houses or other loot containers.
* Players Respawn on death.
* Fragments that are on Player corpses will return to their original positions when the corpse despawns.
* The Loot tables have been substantially altered for MP. Expect to find more gear than you do in SP.
* The Robot Spawn tables have been altered. At the moment there are only 3 NPC types in the MP game: Hunters, Riders and the Balloon. We are planning to add some more in future updates (though probably not the full SP compliment for reasons of balance and population).

Notes on the WIP nature of the Multiplayer Test and Known Issues (Or “What To Do If You See Something Odd.”)

The Multiplayer Test of Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a Work In Progress and as such there are many bugs left to iron out or features that are just plain missing. We would like you – our dear testers – to investigate and report these and any other bugs or issues you encounter. Here is a list of things to be aware of, it’s not at all complete…

* UI Issues – A full UI pass is needed, clashing player inventories, overlapping text and offset buttons are to be expected, as is general UI untidiness
* Rider issues – There are some outstanding issues with Rider behaviour.
* Balloon light – Although the Light can be shot out on Clients, the server does not recognise this action and will not pass it on to the other Clients. In short, don’t waste your ammo…
* Some flora and fauna are missing including rabbits, pheasants and wild mushrooms.
* Although functional, there are currently no visual effects for the Talismans. The invisibility talisman will make you invisible to bots but not to players, the invulnerability talisman will make you invulnerable to all but have no visual effect.
* There are no visual effects for the trombone, the binoculars or the scanner. You can still play the trombone and robots will react, but other Clients will not see it (for now! We can’t wait to have multiplayer brass bands either…).
* There is no sea beast in MP at this time. So yeah, this means you can swim off the edge of the world at the moment. It’s not at all big or clever to do this and post about it.
* Some sound issues, specifically robot beep-boops not always being played. CONFIRMED cases of this with video evidence extremely welcome.. which brings us to the next point…

BUG Reports
We want bug reports! Please post any bugs or oddities you discover in the Main Big Robot forums. We’re especially hungry for your output_logs.txt which you can find in the “sir_Data” folder inside the root Sir directory on Windows or in “~/Library/Logs/Unity/Player.log” on mac. Screenshots and video footage of bugs is especially welcome.

We look forward to seeing you all on the servers! Oh, and do be careful…

This is a quick update to say that the Sir, You Are Being Hunted multiplayer test will start on July 1st. It’s been a long and difficult road to get to this point, but thanks to the hard work of Dan and James we’re now able to open up a test client to everyone who owns the game at the start of next month. We’ll collecting feedback bug reports as usual for this work-in-progress aspect of the game.

We’ll provide information on how to get hold of the client – as well as some other details about what we’re up to – on the day.

Hello! It’s been a bit quiet on here since 1.1, but we thought we should update regarding multiplayer now that we know a bit more. In short: it’s been delayed pretty significantly. We’re now planning to get it done for some time in early 2015.

While initially we’d made great progress, things ground to a halt as we disappeared down a rabbit-hole of networking issues and we ultimately didn’t get to where we’d hoped to be in the weeks and then months after launch. Consequently we’re going to bring in another developer to help get it across the finish line, and that’s going to take some additional time and resources to do.

Obviously this is deeply frustrating, and it’s particularly vexing in light of the speedy progress of the rest of the project. We apologise sincerely to everyone who has been waiting for this aspect of the game, We can only say that we share your frustration. We’ll keep going, though, and we should be able to update again soon with some images of our player characters in action.

Today we’re serving up the 1.1 patch for you all, which fixes a bunch of minor issues but also adds a custom biome and a global robot manager.

The robot manager allows you to select global values for how enemies appear in the world, which should allow you to make it harder or easier as you prefer. You can even remove all hostile NPCs from the world (the pheasants and rabbits stay!) and consequently add a “Walking Simulator” mention to our Steam tags…

The custom biome means that you can create some non-standard worlds that go way beyond what the five standard biomes allow. You can switch that on in Game Options. But wait! We know that the first thing you’ll do is make the maddest worlds you can, so it’s important to stress that the permutations this world generator provides are so extreme that they might make teleporter fragments inaccessible to you, which means there’s a chance the crazier levels can’t be completed.

If you don’t want to risk that for a proper playthrough, then stick to the standard templates or spend some time experimenting with a myriad of valid worlds. If you’re happy just to see what you can make, however, that’s what the custom biome is for. Remember that with the robot manager you can also now tour these worlds in safety. There’s even a world code function in Game Options so you can share your creations with others. (Paste these codes in the Custom biome editing screen to get that exact world!)

We’re pushing out an update with a bunch of small fixes and tweaks today, but really big news is that Sir’s single player mode will hit v1.0 on May 1st. This, therefore, is the final patch of our Early Access period. Oh yes, it’s the end of a long road.

There will still be a few things to come after v1.0, as well as ongoing fixes and support, including multiplayer (no, no date on that yet, we’ve still got a way to go!) and also a customisation patch that will allow you mess with the game generation in-menu, rather than just in the back-end XML files. But we’ll get to those later!

For now, the big message of this latest update is: help us bug hunt!

We need as many people as possible to pile in, find problems, share logfiles, and help us get this game into the best shape it can be. There’s a bunch of changes up today, including major performance improvements. Go and try it out!

Changes

- NEW – End sequence and credits. The closing voice-over and credit page now play before you get to your stats.

- NEW – Tooltips on all items, plus roll-over instructions for inventory slots.

- NEW – Fragment counter in inventory revamped to show fragment count per island, plus current location.

- NEW – State indicators for bleeding, trapped, and starving.

- Changed some textures and vegetation detail on Rural biome.

- Major optimisation pass, up to 30% performance increase on some machines.

Fixes

- Walters’ voice clips now no longer wait for each other to finish (so you don’t miss any!)

- Toy train can no longer fly into the sky on cliffs/slopes.

- Opening inventory or map with control no longer conflicts with mouse and keyboard controls.

[Note: This is live on Steam now, and will appear on Humble later this evening.]

Today’s update adds a new environment type, our fifth and final. As we promised way back in the mists of Kickstarter, we now have a biome type for each of the islands: Rural, fens, industrial, mountains and castle. The castle biome places a huge ruined tourist attraction across one part of the map – a familiar sight for people who live in certain parts of the UK!

Behold a video:

As such this update represents the marvelous conclusion of the major content updates for the alpha. We have another patch coming up to rejig some biome elements and add an end sequence, but this nevertheless delivers all the single-player content we’d planned and promised during our initial fund-raiser. It’s a fine feeling to have come this far. But it is far from over! We need your feedback to continue the great dance of balancing and bug-stomping. So let us know what you find, over on the forums.

The new build is out now on Steam, and will be available this evening on Humble.

Well, it’s the end of an era. For many months we’ve been releasing a new NPC with each update and now – finally – the cast of Sir is complete: meet The Landowner.

This update is a huge internal milestone for us as it represents the last piece of new behavioural code, the last set of animations, the last character to enter our procedurally generated world. We still have more content to come in the form of the Castle Biome, but the vast bulk of Sir’s assets are now complete.

Why is this important? Because it means we’ve had time to really start tinkering with the variables!

This update has seen some really tight focus on core AI behaviour, most noticeably in the Hunters – our most behaviourally-complex AI. You should see big improvements to Hunter combat behaviour, the way they handle cover and corners, but also to their non-combat states. Several improvements were made to the way AI investigate noise and as such distraction items should be more reliable and more rigorously investigated. Our robots have also had their eyes recalibrated, the ranges they will engage and pursue you from should feel much fairer now. That’s not to say we’ve made things easier. There is – of course – the new threat of the Landowner. But the new AI code changes can actually make the bots tougher in some situations, more tricksy.

There are also some new features to play with! The Toy Train now has a secondary “Moving” function mode (as with all items, “Right Mouse” to activate secondary functions) allowing you to set it trundling off in a particular direction rather than remaining static on a track. This can be a great way to lead robots away from – or into – certain areas. Cue conga-lines of robots chasing tooting trains…

Following the successful response to last-update’s TrackIR support we’ve also added a key for independent head-movement just using a key modifier. If you hold down “Left Alt” (default) you can now look around while continuing to move in a different direction. It’s like TrackIR, without TrackIR!

There are also some under-the-hood things for modder/tweaker types to play with which we’ll talk about more in the BR forums if you’re interested…

All in all this release feels great. The cast is complete. They’re starting to behave properly, and we only have one biome and customisation options to go before we’re content complete and we can start calling this a beta…

As always feedback on the forums is very gratefully received. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT NOTES:

We recommend you generate a new world to take advantage of new features. Also: stuff might break on old saves.

Changes

- NEW – Landowner NPC.

- NEW – Support for controllers in menus (still not inventories yet, soon!)

- NEW – Free-Look key modifier. Holding “Left Alt” (by default) will allow you move your head independently from the body, simulating TrackIR use for those without that hardware. Only works if TrackIR not running or toggled on.

- Toy Train now has “Moving” mode as well as “Static” (Right Mouse default).